Monthly Archives: December 2011

“You need not be anxious if you do your best.”~St. Angela Merici, founder of the Ursuline Sisters

I like to remind myself of this quote when I am feeling overwhelmed or stressed, and I thought it would be a good one to share with all of you, in this busy month of December. Whether it’s final exam stress, work stress, holiday stress, or just plain life stress, I hope these words can offer similar inspiration to you.

The date on this post is December 12. How did that happen? Where did the time go? I can’t believe the end of 2011 is already upon us.

Today I found myself wanting to blog about routines, and settling into a grownup routine. Which makes the date on this post all the more ridiculous.

“Seriously, Maura? You graduated and moved home in MAY, haven’t you settled into a routine yet?”

But I really haven’t.

I worked a summer job, and the best part of summer is that you can have less of a routine, and a bit of a break.

Then I was job searching for about a month, where I tried to settle into a routine of doing at least three productive things each day, ranging from job applications to working out to seeing or catching up with friends. But there was still a lot of downtime, and I found myself watching a lot of terrible television during the month of September (you don’t know how addicting One Tree Hill is until you’ve watched it, ok?).

And then I started my job in October, when you think I would have started settling into a routine. But through October and November, I traveled for four weekends, and worked another two or three, right up until Thanksgiving. And I loved all my trips and am really enjoying everything I’m learning at work, so it was a fun, busy stretch of the year. But all that fun and busy-ness didn’t allow me to settle into a routine here at home.

So as we head into a new year, I’m looking forward to getting into a set routine. I was so excited last Friday to just have a normal, two-day weekend, as dorky as it sounds.

Part of my new routine will involve figure skating. If you couldn’t tell from my shameless plugs for the ND Figure Skating team, skating is one of my favorite things to do, and just the best stress reliever there is. Everything else that is bothering me falls away when I am on the ice. I started skating again last weekend, and was offered a coaching position for the rink’s Saturday Learn to Skate lessons. So now my Saturday mornings will consist of skating and teaching, which I couldn’t be more excited about!

Ironically enough, this Saturday morning skating and teaching routine is one that I know well, because it is the one that governed my weekend schedule from when I was ten years old until I left for college.

So it’s almost a little weird to be returning to an old routine, even though it is one that I know I’ll enjoy. I like to think of it as cyclical, me returning to my old room and living at home and doing the Saturday morning skating routine again. But when I compare it to what some other people are doing, living in brand new cities, in grown-up apartments, I sometimes wonder if it seems like regressing. And as a natural worrier/overanalyzer, sometimes that bothers me.

I don’t want to feel like I’m stuck, or like I’m going backwards, because I came back home again. Because the fact of the matter is that I’m not. I am not the same 16 year old that lived in my room and taught skating on Saturday mornings. I may still be living in my old room and teaching skating on Saturday mornings, but now I am 23, and I bring those seven more years of life experience with me into everything I do, whether it is at work, with friends, or teaching the 3 year olds at skating (and yes, 3 year olds learning to ice skate is as adorable as it sounds 🙂 ). I have grown and changed a lot since I last lived here, and that will shape my new experiences, even though they are in an old place.

So the new me is going to forge ahead in an old (but still good…it is home after all!) place. Wish me luck!

I happened upon this site today, as I pondered about what to write for this week’s blog post. After getting over the initial disappointment that my “Outside the Bubble” blog idea was not the first and most brilliant of its kind (just kidding), I started reading some of the articles on this site and loved it.

What I find I struggle with most lately is a lack of common experience, and community: everyone taking finals at the same time and sharing in the stress, everyone going to Finny’s on Thursdays, everyone dedicating their entire Saturday to a football game. So it was nice to read the posts on this site and be reminded that there is a universality in this post-grad experience, despite the fact that everyone is off in different places, doing different (yet also awesome) things.

Check it out if you’re looking for some candid, often humorous commentary, on all things post-grad.